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Migrants from around the world are using charter planes to try to reach the U.S. They fly into Nicaragua and, from there, make their way north. The Biden administration is accusing these charter companies of collaborating with global smuggling networks. Emily Green reports.
EMILY GREEN: Pierre's story begins in Haiti. He and his wife fled the island in 2016 after his father survived an assassination attempt, and he eventually ended up in the U.S.
PIERRE: (Non-English language spoken).
GREEN: He left in such a hurry, he couldn't take his three kids with him, he says. He started coming up with a plan to reunite with them. NPR is not identifying him by his full name because he is concerned speaking out could hurt his asylum claim, which is still unresolved. But getting his children out of Haiti was much harder than Pierre ever expected - until last year, when Pierre paid nearly $8,000 for his three children, ages 10, 13 and 18, to take a charter flight to Nicaragua.
PIERRE: (Non-English language spoken).
GREEN: "You heard about it on Facebook and TikTok. Everybody seemed to be taking them," he says.
The phenomenon began when Nicaragua eliminated its visa requirements for Cubans in late 2021. Other countries soon followed. Manuel Orozco studies migration for the Inter-American Dialogue, a D.C.-based think tank.
MANUEL OROZCO: Nicaragua realized that this was a way to use the term weaponized migration.
GREEN: The Biden administration has imposed economic sanctions on the country because of political repression. For Nicaragua's government, the flights served a political purpose, according to Orozco.
OROZCO: Basically, to utilize migration as a way to attack directly the United States by sending thousands of migrants.
GREEN: Nicaragua also raked in millions of dollars through the charter planes, from landing fees, airport taxes and hotel stays. Orozco counted more than 14 daily flights from Haiti to Nicaragua over a six-month period, each carrying up to 190 passengers. Over the last year, he estimates charter planes ferried hundreds of thousands of people into Nicaragua.
ADAM ISACSON: I would put most of the credit on enterprising travel agencies in those home countries, which are really on a blurry line between travel agency and smuggling operation.
GREEN: That's Adam Isacson, an analyst with the Washington Office on Latin America. He says the travel agencies sold plane tickets for thousands of dollars.
ISACSON: If you're from someplace on the other side of the planet, these travel agencies can still promise you that you will get into the United States and you will get to stay there because the United States doesn't have capacity to deport you.
GREEN: U.S. officials watched the surging number of charter flights into Nicaragua with alarm. Blas Nunez-Neto is senior adviser for migration to President Biden.
BLAS NUNEZ-NETO: The authoritarian regime in Nicaragua has essentially become a human smuggling entity in and of itself.
GREEN: Nunez-Neto says Nicaragua doesn't intend for migrants to actually stay in the country. In fact, he says, the government requires most to leave within 96 hours. The Nicaraguan government didn't respond to repeated attempts by NPR to answer allegations that it's facilitating human smuggling. And there's another concern.
NUNEZ-NETO: These charter companies are working with criminal organizations. Often, they are part of criminal organizations.
GREEN: Criminal organizations, he says, that are fronting as travel agencies and arrange the entire trip to the U.S. border for up to $70,000. In recent months, the Biden administration has revoked the visas of charter company executives and taken other actions to stop these flights.
PIERRE: (Non-English language spoken).
GREEN: For Pierre, the father from Haiti, the life of his children was more important than the money. He was reunited with them in July after nearly a decade apart. He estimates he spent as much as $30,000 on their journey to the U.S.
PIERRE: (Non-English language spoken).
GREEN: He says he didn't think twice about the money, that even if he had to spend more to bring them to the U.S., he would have done it. For NPR News, I'm Emily Green.
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